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Double a Piano?


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Hi!

 

If a piano sounds thin do you ever double it to give it some more presence? I've done it

for guitar obviously but is that a thing for piano?

Have you tried adding some chorus?

 

I haven't. This piano came from the Air Mini Grand and I bounced it to audio. I like the tone of it

but I'd like it to have more depth and presence.

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Chorus, Reverb, careful placement in stereo space ... these are the things that I would look for. Because I cannot recall any live performance, ever, where two pianos were playing exactly the same part at the same time. Now, you could certainly have two instruments playing different parts – some kind of "counter melody" perhaps – or other orchestral instruments supporting (but, not too tightly) the notes being played by the pianist. In short, create a rich setting in which the piano then takes center stage.
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This piano came from the Air Mini Grand and I bounced it to audio. I like the tone of it but I'd like it to have more depth and presence.

 

I'm not completely getting the meaning of this because I consider "depth" and "presence" as properties of the tone.

 

All grand pianos sound different from each other; some more so and some just slightly. This goes with the territory: Even instruments coming from the same builder are treated differently depending on the piano technician and on the preferences of the player.

"Orchestra grands" with a very large size usually have a very long sustain due to their longer strings. But they are not automatically louder than a studio grand. Yesterday I was in a room with a Steinway orchestra grand and a Yamaha Studio grand; the Yamaha was clearly louder and had a more "biting" sound with way more presence (which isn't automatically a good thing).

This also depends on the material that is being played: Is it long chords, is it "hammering", is it a melody, ... ? This would to some degree influence what can be done with the sound.

I personally don't think doubling would automatically not work; it really depends on the material. If the sound of the pianos is slightly different: why not? Doubling in the bass region is asking for trouble though - this is an invitation for phase problems.

In general I would suggest treating the material itself in a different way (but again this depends highly on the nature of said material): using different voicings (in wide spacing), perhaps doubling crucial notes an octave above and so on.

Compression and EQ might also help. Chorus can make a grand piano quickly sound like an electric grand so I'd proceed with caution here.

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I'd like it to have more depth and presence.

It's hard to use words to describe sounds, which means it's a challenge for us to tell what you should do with that piano sound without actually hearing it or knowing what tone you're going for.

 

Presence usually describes a richness in the higher frequency range in order to make the instrument appear closer to the listener (thus more present). So with an EQ, create a frequency boost, and swipe it in the higher frequency ranges in order to find the right range to boost in order to achieve that effect.

 

Depth can relate to EQ and some lower frequency range that can add body to the sound, in which case it's pretty much the same concept as for presence, albeit in lower frequency ranges. Or it could relate to the amount of virtual space the instrument takes up in the stereo field, in which case that can be increased using reverb and or delay (in small amounts).

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In any case, actually doubling up the piano with another sound (or even piano) will quite likely sound nasty. Consider that a piano tuner has spent the better half of his education learning how to precisely tune each of the up to four strings per note to get a rich and full sound, with a bit of movement but without sounding phase-y or even chorus-y. Now you strap another sound on top of it and you have pretty much no control over tuning and/or phase, so some or many of the 88 notes may clash heavily.
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In any case, actually doubling up the piano with another sound (or even piano) will quite likely sound nasty.

 

The ubiquitous "piano+strings" layer sound suggests otherwise.

Apart from that I believe that Supertramp for example actually doubletracked the piano occasionally as well. "Take the long way home" has slightly different piano tracks on the left and right side. "Breakfast in America" has also very different sounding pianos left and right but that might be a single track that was eq'ed very differently.

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Thanks for all the replies! The piano came from the Air Mini Grand. It wasn't tracked live. Sorry for the poor description on my part. This is a pop song and the piano is just playing chords nothing very complicated.

 

I do like the idea of maybe choosing certain notes and changing the octave.

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